Thank you India!

I always felt like I’d be here forever. Or maybe it’s just because I feel happy and content here and would like to stay forever.

I could never imagine leaving India. “Someone will have to drag me away, kicking and screaming,” is what I thought.

But all things come to an end. And change is something which has to be accepted.

I feel very fortunate that for the past 6.5 years I have been able to live here continuously.

My husband and I had decided to move here. We weren’t sent over by some multi-national company. Before moving to Bangalore, we were living in London. One day I decided to quit my job. A week later my husband decided to quit his. He didn’t like living in London and wanted to leave. So we started to think of where to move to next… We didn’t want to go back to Belgium and I didn’t give going back to Canada even a thought. There were many opportunities in his field in the US, but moving there was out of the question.

We had been to India several times before, and as connoisseurs of Indian music and dance, it was time to give India a try. It felt right. And it was, because he got two job offers: one in Bombay and one in Bangalore. I was praying for Bangalore, and Bangalore it was.

I was able to continue my study of Indian classical dance in Bangalore. We went to concerts and dance performances, and travelled all over India to attend music and dance festivals. ‘This is what we came to India for,’ we would say, and I think we made the most of it. Working full-time, my husband often did not have the time to travel, but I didn’t hesitate to take off solo.

India gave me the chance to breathe, free my mind and let my creativity manifest itself. I started writing and this blog came into being and I found myself spending a lot of time writing about things I enjoy, mostly the Indian arts and places I’ve visited in India and found that people wanted to read what I wrote and even publish it. India gave me the inspiration to become a writer.

Thank you India!

I feel like I have experienced and seen a lot of India in the past 6.5 years... but I also feel that there’s still so much more to see and experience…

I know I’ll be back, but something tells me it won’t be the same. It won’t be like living here full-time, all year round.

I don’t know when I’ll be back and in the meantime I’m not sure what to do with this blog. Should I continue publishing something every month, at least a few photo essays, to keep my readers coming to my window? Or should I just put this blog on stand-by until the next time I’m in India?

I believe that things happen for a reason and the pain of leaving India is alleviated somewhat by another dream we’ve had which finally came to fruition recently. For years we’ve wanted to renovate an old stone house in a lovely medieval village in beautiful Istria, that magical peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. This house is helping me leave India, and embark on a new adventure. Though I’m awfully sad to leave, I’m ready to try something new.

A new adventure calls for a new blog… Thank you dear readers for looking through my window all these years. Wherever I go I’ll always have a window to look through, so please do visit me in my new home and share with me the view of Istria Outside My Window.